Update: Crave Spice

jasonrohrer · 2020-06-27 06:26:02

Last week, a bunch of new foods were added to the game, pushing the total up to 64. Pickles were among the new foods added, and they make a perfect example of a pressing design problem. Why do people eat pickles in real life? They don't have much nutritional value. Maybe they eat the lacto-fermented type for probiotic benefits. But they're mostly eaten because they taste good.

As I work toward my goal of making the largest and most comprehensive crafting game of all time---a true love letter to our civilized world, which is so full of all the amazing things that people make---64 foods is just the beginning. But why would people bother to make these foods? They can't actually taste things in the game. Players will likely gravitate to the most efficient food, and make only that, after the novelty of making a food that looks like a hand-drawn pickle wears off. To put it another way: ice cream has been in the game for over a year, but almost no one eats it.

In facing this problem a while back, the YUM system was a good solution. Each novel food that you eat in your lifetime contributes to a growing bonus multiplier, boosting the value of each additional novel food. This is an abstract representation of "nutritional variety" or something like that. A long YUM chain is much more resource-efficient than a mono-diet of even the most efficient food in the game.

However, YUIM only takes us so far. Analysis by community members has shown that an optimally-scheduled YUM chain of just 24 foods---the 24 most-efficient foods---is enough to last a person all the way through their life. What about the other 40 foods? For players who strive for efficiency, the back 40 are effectively dead content.

But sometimes, you just feel like having a pickle, right?

The new craving system solves this problem in a way that can scale way beyond 24 optimal foods. Each family is assigned a sequence of foods that they will crave, one after the other, with foods chosen based on how advanced they are. Eating a craved food gives a bigger YUM multiplier boost---double the usual increment. Of course, for some hard-to-get foods, a double bonus might not be enough to make the food worthwhile. In that case, the craving will persist, even across generations, until it is finally satisfied. For each generation that goes without the craved food, the bonus increases. Eventually, even the most difficult to produce food will be worth making, as the bonus keeps growing.

In a given lifetime, eating a series of craved foods will be even more efficient than a standard YUM chain. However, if you get stuck on a food, or decide not to pursue your current craving, your craving sequence gets blocked on that food. So even if the craved food is not worthwhile for the initial bonus attached to it, it might be worthwhile so that you can continue eating other craved foods that will come later.

To expand your craving possibilities, the raw spices added last week have been used in a few additional recipes---spiced versions of shrimp and mutton that provide no additional food value compared to the non-spiced version. You probably won't bother making them, unless you get a craving for them.

And to aid you in preparing all this stuff, tables have become much more user-friendly, allowing you to transform objects that are sitting on the table without removing them from the table first. So you can make pie crusts, chop ingredients, and season meats, right on the table.

To prevent mother overload, mothers are now blocked from having more babies if they currently have four living children. This will allow them to focus their attention on helping those four survive. This is a soft block, which will be overridden if all mothers on the server have more than four living children. But in general, it should help quite a bit to smooth out the variance that sometimes saddles one mother with loads of kids.

And speaking of kids, since male characters don't have any babies themselves, their nieces and nephews count toward their genetic score---men are treated as uncles. People have figured out that women in the game can avoid genetic offspring by leaving their homeland to remain infertile for their whole lives. This has been fixed by treating any childless women as aunts---their nieces and nephews will also count toward their genetic score.

Coconut Fruit · 2020-06-27 07:08:46

Busy week, wasn't it?

Great update, thank you Jason!

This game is really getting better and better, it's already at very good state, I even started telling other people about this game.

I really like your ideas... Craving... Brilliant!

jasonrohrer · 2020-06-27 07:15:18

Thanks, Coconut!

Arcurus · 2020-06-27 08:40:46

thank you for the craving and table update!

Looking forward to test it out.

By the way, exiling is also changed now. Before you needed to exile before you start a posse. Now it counts also if you exile after you start a posse.

Last edited by Arcurus (2020-06-27 10:26:32)

merryllamax · 2020-06-27 09:23:53

Wow, I'm excited to try this!

merryllamax · 2020-06-27 12:18:49

jasonrohrer wrote:

To prevent mother overload, mothers are now blocked from having more babies if they currently have four living children. This will allow them to focus their attention on helping those four survive. This is a soft block, which will be overridden if all mothers on the server have more than four living children. But in general, it should help quite a bit to smooth out the variance that sometimes saddles one mother with loads of kids.

I really like this change and the intention behind it though... I have just popped out 12 children my last life, one after another, and now I had the added pleasure of going "aaah, my older children are dead, then". I was Eve and some kids are just not gonna live in Eve camps, that is fine. My next life my daughter had quintuplets! (in an Eve camp, lol) so I guess it means quintuplets are still possible.

Arcurus · 2020-06-27 12:25:31

merryllamax wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
To prevent mother overload, mothers are now blocked from having more babies if they currently have four living children. This will allow them to focus their attention on helping those four survive. This is a soft block, which will be overridden if all mothers on the server have more than four living children. But in general, it should help quite a bit to smooth out the variance that sometimes saddles one mother with loads of kids.
I really like this change and the intention behind it though... I have just popped out 12 children my last life, one after another, and now I had the added pleasure of going "aaah, my older children are dead, then". I was Eve and some kids are just not gonna live in Eve camps, that is fine. My next life my daughter had quintuplets! (in an Eve camp, lol) so I guess it means quintuplets are still possible.

yea funny, one life as eve i had tons of kids, i think 6 plus. then next eves was always one kid in the first second and then none anymore. Quite sad...

Was it because we where stuck with yum on mashrooms? We tried also with fire, still no kids.

It looks also like my genetics are broken. Was Eve Kelderman and then nameless child, and then no gene reporting anymore. Maybe because of a bug?

Last edited by Arcurus (2020-06-27 12:28:06)

merryllamax · 2020-06-27 12:44:19

Arcurus wrote:

It looks also like my genetics are broken. Was Eve Kelderman and then nameless child, and then no gene reporting anymore. Maybe because of a bug?

Hm, looking at my genes, my dead daughter is nowhere to be found and only 3/5 my dead grandchildren are showing up. Weird. Also, I think I fucked up my naming my daughter first and then myself, cause my daughter has no last name. Ups.

happynova · 2020-06-27 19:29:03

I haven't tried it out yet, so maybe I'll change my mind once I see it in action, but am I the only one who thinks the craving thing seems a bit... overcomplicated? Especially as, the unpopularity of ice cream notwithstanding, it seems to me that the yum system in general works really well to do exactly what Jason wanted it to do: to encourage and require making and eating a wide variety of good, not just endlessly spamming whatever is deemed most efficient, while making for some useful and fairly interesting gameplay.

Well, I guess if the idea is to eventually have more food in the game that anyone could ever possibly eat in a lifetime, it makes a certain amount of sense. We already seem to have more food variety in the game than we do variety of anything else, though!

DrRoy · 2020-06-29 10:06:42

I played this update today. It is simply amazing.
So many different foods in town, incentive to go out to gather wild foods. Live the yum dream!

Tables also went from okay to super awesome.

Imo this is exactly what you need in a game with thousands of craftable objects: mechanics that prevent dead content.

Thank you for reviving so many food items!
I would be soo happy if you would revive even more dead content. There is a lot of unused stuff out there....

tanyagizell · 2020-06-29 15:09:19

Thanks for the update
Id say that the "original" reasoning for making pickles is that salt extends shelf life of foods
Then again, a system where food is constantly going bad might be.... err....

moridin · 2020-07-01 23:36:43

I've gone through the trouble and made bean tacos because i was craving them and after that i was craving psilocybe mushroom.

Spoonwood · 2021-12-14 16:18:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

As I work toward my goal of making the largest and most comprehensive crafting game of all time---a true love letter to our civilized world, which is so full of all the amazing things that people make---64 foods is just the beginning.

It's 13 days short of being 18 months, a year and a half, later now. The last food added to the game was cooked mutton with rub on June 27, 2020, when the above got posted.

64 foods is just the beginning???

WumboJumbo · 2021-12-23 03:37:43

Spoonwood wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
As I work toward my goal of making the largest and most comprehensive crafting game of all time---a true love letter to our civilized world, which is so full of all the amazing things that people make---64 foods is just the beginning.
It's 13 days short of being 18 months, a year and a half, later now. The last food added to the game was cooked mutton with rub on June 27, 2020, when the above got posted.
64 foods is just the beginning???

Spoonwood, have you been living under a rock for that long? We've already known this for ages now.

Goliath · 2022-02-19 09:37:47

Spoonwood wrote:

jasonrohrer wrote:
As I work toward my goal of making the largest and most comprehensive crafting game of all time---a true love letter to our civilized world, which is so full of all the amazing things that people make---64 foods is just the beginning.
It's 13 days short of being 18 months, a year and a half, later now. The last food added to the game was cooked mutton with rub on June 27, 2020, when the above got posted.
64 foods is just the beginning???

The next update gonna be lite.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-06-27 06:26:02

Update: Crave Spice

#2 2020-06-27 07:08:46

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#3 2020-06-27 07:15:18

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#4 2020-06-27 08:40:46

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#5 2020-06-27 09:23:53

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#6 2020-06-27 12:18:49

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#7 2020-06-27 12:25:31

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#8 2020-06-27 12:44:19

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#9 2020-06-27 19:29:03

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#10 2020-06-29 10:06:42

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#11 2020-06-29 15:09:19

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#12 2020-07-01 23:36:43

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#13 2021-12-14 16:18:06

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#14 2021-12-23 03:37:43

Re: Update: Crave Spice

#15 2022-02-19 09:37:47

Re: Update: Crave Spice

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